What may have bothered Mayor Jim Clarke the most about last Monday’s City Council discussion on a polystyrene ban was the dominance of hardline approaches.

As a lifetime politician, Mr. Clarke is known as a masterful practitioner of the underrated art of compromise.

Goals can be achieved if each side will make meaningful concessions, he says.

“If anything bothered me about last week,” the mayor said, “I felt as if we were ships passing in the night. The folks from Ballona Creek Renaissance and others just said ‘ban Styrofoam.’ That was the be-all, end-all. People on the other side said, ‘Don’t ban it. It will put us out of business.’

“There was no middle ground,” said Mr. Clarke.

There was more philosophical cloudiness, and it annoyed Mayor Clarke.

“I still don’t understand why people who want the ban oppose recycling,” he said. “I mean, come on. Let’s do both. We can do both. We can create a ban, but we also can recycle because all you are dealing with is food containers.”

Mr. Clarke further is vexed because the nexus point is not black and white, either-or. He said is not as if the outlawing of polystyrene food containers – which the Council unanimously approved – will make all polystyrene vanish as a threat of the environment.

Mr. Clarke said he was not positive, but he believes ban supporters strongly reject recycling because they fear this method would supplant a ban.